Monsters

Monsters by the band TimeFlies

I see your monsters, I see your pain

Tell me your problems I'll chase them away

I'll be your lighthouse

I'll make it okay

When I see your monsters

I'll stand there so brave

And chase them all away…

The month of May is full of monsters and dates I would rather avoid. May 21^st, 2000 the date my parents were killed, May 5^th my mom’s birthday, and then of course Mother’s Day.

 

And yet every single May, I seem to question myself for why I feel off, why I feel drained, why everything seems tainted with gloominess, and why I feel like I am moving at half the speed I normally move at.

 

I try to pin it on the guy who just bruised my soul a bit, or the project that is taking longer than expected, or the people who are asking more of me than I want to give.

 

I never allow myself to just BE sad. I never allow myself the fact that May will probably weigh on the unpleasant side. I never take a moment to realize that for all my preaching about being “authentic”, I myself, never allow for a moment to just shake with sadness, and not have it all together for once.

 

Just as much as the next person, I hate being sad. I hate being in a rut. I hate not going at full speed. I hate not being ridiculously productive and making things happen. And yet, May seems to smack me in the face and beg me to slow down for a moment, to take a breath, realize the sacredness of life and how fast it can all change!

 

Also to compound May’s sadness, in 2014 I got news that a very close friend of a lot of my friends and contacts was found dead. A guy my own age. A guy, who I wasn’t currently close with, but someone who has left me with a lot of hysterical memories because of the silly-havoc my friends and I used to find ourselves in.

 

And then two days after swallowing this young person’s death, I find out that Marjorie, a woman who had been a mentor and advisor to me for over 14 years suddenly passed away from cancer. I was in total shock. I had just spoken with her! And during that conversation, she was healthy, fine and there were no signs of the cancer resurfacing.

 

As I digested, I seemed to sink into a further spiral. I was annoyed at myself for not bouncing back quickly, & for not being happy-have-it-all-together-Jenn. I started to freak out. What if I never felt happy again? What if I stayed in this sad-rut FOREVER? What if peace never arrived? We live in a world where being strong seems to mean never breaking down. Having a stiff-upper lip and pushing through the pain is commended, and falling apart and being sad is really frowned upon.

 

Somehow being stoic is considered courageous. And being genuine to your feelings is considered weak and indulgent.

 

However, it was in the moment of allowing myself the space to actually grieve that all of a sudden I felt okay and found peace. Once I gave myself the room to feel glum and realized that these sad feelings would eventually pass, the melancholy and sorrow immediately started to lift.

 

It is okay to feel sad. It is okay to have off days. It is okay to cry tears of pain. It is okay to mourn. In fact, it is the brave thing to do. For only in doing these things, will we truly heal.

 

Allowing myself this realization, instantly made me feel better.

 

I realized that truly living means allowing myself the entire rainbow of emotions – not just the happy-feel-good-ones. My whole message is about being authentic, and being authentic is feeling and experiencing the really raw-jaded moments along with the really fantastic-joyful moments.

 

Life is going to shake us at our core – and it may even shake us multiple times over the course of this lifetime. But when we allow ourselves the space to mourn, to be sad, we do heal and we do find ourselves coming back to center.

 

However denying, squelching, and avoiding is not going to get us anywhere. In fact, the only place denying leads is to more sadness, more depression and a severe detachment from the extraordinary things life does have to offer.

 

There is no way to avoid that horrendous events will happen, but what matters in the end, is how we move through these tragedies.

 

By not allowing ourselves to mourn, we keep ourselves cemented and stuck in a really yucky place. Mourning, grieving and being sad, allows us to release the toxic emotions and move on to a really balanced place in life.

 

We slay the monsters by feeling our pain, experiencing our grief and learning to wade through the sadness.

 

Don’t avoid the monsters…feel through the pain, experience the grief…the monsters will continue to resurface until we learn to release the toxins, the poison, the venomous emotions that we are so deathly afraid of even acknowledging. It is only when we are conscious that we are experiencing these feelings that we can destroy the monsters for good!

 

To facing the monsters head on. To no longer avoiding. To realizing being brave means acknowledging ALL of our emotions. To allowing moments of sadness in order to come back to center.